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Yeah, I think that people are going to one day wish that we were back in the days when commercials were separate pieces from the actual TV shows.

Here's the simple issue: networks get their money primarily from what companies are willing to pay for commercial time. So, let's say consumers have a simple way to skip all commercials and decide to do so. One of a couple of things will happen: the networks will get their funds in some other manner, one of which is what gets charged to providers. Or they will find ways to put commercials in shows in ways we can't skip over. Product placement already occurs, but I would predict what would be more prevalent would be commercials running over the show as the show is playing. We already have the irritating ads for other TV shows running across the bottom of shows; imagine animated ads for peanut butter and pepsi and insurance running over the bottom of every show's episodes.

We won't get away from commercials, so be careful what you wish for. Eliminate what we have today, and it will be replaced with something pretty intrusive.

I think if advertisers understood how few of the ads are actually watched by anyone they'd insist on the method you talk about above. I mean lets face it Since the beginning of TV when a commercial came on unless it was particularly entertaining it was time to get up and get snack, use the bathroom, talk to other people in the room, etc until the show came back on. Then with the invention of the remote, commercial comes on, check out what's on other channels joined the above commercial avoiding activities. Then we get the VCR and one more way to skip commercials. DVR's and autohop are just the latest version of this, nothing revolutionary there. It's to the point where the only people watching commercials are those too feeble get up and move from in front of the tv or push a remote button. Some advertisers are starting to understand this, I mean it seems there's a lot of commercials these days aimed at older people. Of course it seems that broadcast tv does its best to try to convince advertisers they provide a valuable tool for reaching customers, I mean look how they keep trying to perpetuate the myth that the 18 to 49 age group matters the most to potential advertisers. I mean come on lets get real, the younger people are exactly the age group that's least likely to see any ads due to the way they choose to watch their shows, weather it's using technology like DVR's, streaming via the internet or ordering via Netflix. In any case what CBS did here just made them look like the bad guy and gave free promotion to the Hopper so it was rather the epic fail on their part.

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." - Douglas Adams

"Who would rule a nation when he could have easier work, such as carrying water uphill in a sieve?" - Robert Jordan

Pure fact? Not always. Common sense and logic? Always. I'm always here to help people out who lack either.

Look, I know the rules, but I have to say this:

Can you just impose a mental ban on yourself and stop posting on the Dish forums? You really can't seem to contribute in a positive way to any thread over here. It's mindblowing that you never seem to conduct yourself in a decent manner if it's got something to do with Dish.

"Belligerent and numerous."

SlingTV, Tablo and Plex to Roku 3s and Chromecasts on a Vizio 42" in the living room and a Toshiba 32" in my bedroom. Xbox 360 client on a Westinghouse 42" in the game room. Tablets EVERYWHERE!

Can you just impose a mental ban on yourself and stop posting on the Dish forums? You really can't seem to contribute in a positive way to any thread over here. It's mindblowing that you never seem to conduct yourself in a decent manner if it's got something to do with Dish.

then I'm envision more and more people will show middle finger and switching to renting or Internet download w/out ads what are ruining pleasure of watching what you want and how you want;after all it's my TV and it's my time !

It's not like it is your "right" to have TV shows. Someone has to pay the costs of making the shows and broadcasting them. They are not free to make, and they will continue to be made only if someone can make more money than they cost to make and put on the air.

One model would be that all of the income comes from direct fees and no income from commercials. If that happens, the cost to rent the programs would go up astronomically. Same for the cost of legitimate downloads.

Another way to look at it: Right now, Ford, G.E., Target, McDonalds, etc. all pay for a lot of the costs for the programs you watch. If they don't pay, you will.

I have Netflix too. But if the people who put commercials on network TV stopped doing that, our Netflix subscription would cost a LOT more. Because most of the money the networks get to pay for the shows comes from commercials. We get to enjoy low Netflix sub costs because of those commercials on the networks.

So the companies behind the commercials subsidize your Netflix subscription to some significant amount. If they decide one day that no one is watching commercials on TV and stop buying commercial time, you and I will end up paying the costs.

1. CNet is overrated when it comes to reviews and ratings. And their reviews have been anything but unbiased in the past. They are NOT Consumer Reports in that they accept advertising, which makes them dubious at best.

2. A policy from a corporate entity to not engage in any reviews or awards one way or another of products for a company they are in active litigation with is not a bad idea. Who would think the review was unbiased even if it was glowing. It could have a more devious intent. Like praising the Hopper as terrific for consumers to avoid commercials, helping establish injury in a court of law.

3. However, CBS did NOT set up a set of rules until they saw that CNet was going to praise the Hopper. This is where CBS fails and damages itself in several ways. Bad move.

4. Charlie is NOT defending the customer any more than any carrier is other than he wants to sell and the commercial skipping is a selling point, nothing more. He is a feisty SOB and his tactics are not my taste at all, so I have no sympathy for him when another company pulls crap on him. His short term gain may cause us all issues down the road, but that is another discussion. But, he is NOT the good guy here and is milking this for all the pub he can get.

Commercial skipping technology is not good. If you understood the correlation between ad revenue and production costs, you would understand that as well.

Good. I hope you do not have a DVR. DVRs contain commercial skipping technology ... it may be more cumbersome to use 30 second skip or slip than to choose to skip all the commercials in enabled shows, but it remains commercial skipping technology.

So right here in the DISH forum are you making a pledge that in support of television stations and networks that you will NEVER use technology to skip a commercial?

One thing I expect ... that as soon as DISH wins the fight DirecTV will pull out their Replay patents and either sue DISH for copying Replay or introduce their own "Hopping" technology. This is the next step in DVRs.

Good. I hope you do not have a DVR. DVRs contain commercial skipping technology ... it may be more cumbersome to use 30 second skip or slip than to choose to skip all the commercials in enabled shows, but it remains commercial skipping technology.

So right here in the DISH forum are you making a pledge that in support of television stations and networks that you will NEVER use technology to skip a commercial?

The difference between auto hop and skipping through manually are very minimal. Auto hop is not a global selection, nor is it persistent. You must select it each and every time you start watching a show that has it available. I doubt that anyone that would use autohop would watch an ad even if it were not there.

With my new hopper, I am watching more commercials than I did with my 722. I see the start of the commercial before the hop and the end of a commercial before the show starts. With the 722, as soon as a commercial came on, i used the skip button until I saw the show start.

Again, a perfect argument against cross-media ownership. A broadcast company should not be able to own a print company so that these types of conflicts of interest couldn't happen.

Is it a conflict of interest? Yes. But there's no need to regulate this or say, "This type of thing should not be allowed." The market has worked. The news is out that CNET had selected the Hopper with Sling as best in show. The news is also out that CBS interfered with that decision. People will now look skeptically at CNET (and, I hope, CBS's other news products as well) in the future. That skepticism essentially kills CNET's credibility, which will ultimately destroy any media company. The free market will destroy a company for its abuse of power, and there's no need for a government entity to step in.

At this point, the only thing I think CBS can do to restore credibility is to publicly apologize to Dish and CNET employees and sign a public pledge to never interfere again. They'd still have a black eye, but over time it could heal. Right now, they have a gushing, mortal wound.

Where this would have been a problem is if CBS had managed to do all of this on the hush-hush, and we would never have found out about it. But right now, Dish has some marketing fodder: "You have to see the new Hopper - it's so good, even CBS doesn't want you to know about it!" The perfect message for the rebel-minded American viewer.

However, I don't think there has to be an inherent conflict-of-interest for ownership of media companies. It is entirely possible to have a stone wall between marketing and editing. But I also think the reality is that we all have to maintain a certain skepticism of all news outlets, whether they have a conflict-of-interest or not.

"Free Market" does not mean it is free, it means that each element in the market is governed by price and subscriber pressures, not by edicts from some outside authority.

Time-Warner's action was a method of putting pressure on those channels to come to the barganing table and make an agreement, it was one of their pressure tools, just like TV stations whining and puttin a scroll at the bottom of the picture that your system is going to deprive you of their channel because they are cheap, ect.

If a channel is allowed to use the Time-Warner internet system to bypass negotiations on the Time-Warner cable system it weakens their hand.

The "free market" didn't stop Time-Warner cable from blocking internet access to streaming sites when certain channels were lost in carriage disputes.

It did not, but net neutrality should have. People subscribe to Time-Warner internet for connectivity ... and while TWC may bundle additional content with that connectivity, blocking sites that are available on the Internet outside of TWC is not appropriate.

The "free market" didn't stop Time-Warner cable from blocking internet access to streaming sites when certain channels were lost in carriage disputes.

And who, exactly, is forced to do business with Time-Warner? There is an underlying assumption that a free market will be perfect. It won't be. What needs to be free is the flow of information, so consumers can make the choices they want to, based on the things they value. If TW blocked some things, but nobody knew those things were being blocked, then the free market would have failed. But if TW blocked those things and TW customers knew that those things were being blocked, then the free market has not failed. The free market is not a failure when a customer cannot have exactly what they want at the price they want, nor is the free market a failure when the customer's only choices are to do without or accept a less-than-ideal solution. In this case, it would be necessary for a large number of customers to cancel service, which would effectively send a signal to TW that their actions are counterproductive. Customers vote with their wallet. The rest is just posturing.

Franchising agreements (which may have made sense in the 70s and 80s) have long inhibited competition in cable service. I can't deal with Time-Warner if I want their service. My choices in an aparment building are: Comcast. That's it. They have the franchise in this town. Fortunately I'm in a single family home and I have the option of satellite for TV service and Fairpoint's fiber for internet connectivity.